Letter Carriers Recognized For Stamp Out Hunger Campaign

Published: June 30, 2018 @ 12:00 PM EST

The National Association of Letter Carriers (Local 67) was recognized for their decades-long “Stamp Out Hunger” campaign at the June 21st municipal meeting.

Mayor Carl Hokanson started the presentation by saying, “You know people may have complaints. The mail comes late, the mail doesn’t get delivered, the email doesn’t get delivered on time, but I can honestly say in all the years I’ve been here the one thing that we do know and you can count on [is] every May these gentlemen are out there collecting food, going door-to-door, for the homeless here in Roselle Park.”

The mayor continued by giving background on the one-day campaign held every year on the second Saturday of May. It is nation’s largest one-day food drive distributing and donating to local food banks. Since 1991, over 1.5 billion pounds of canned goods and non-perishables have been collected in 27 days. All the food collected in Roselle Park was donated to the Casano Center and Church of the Assumption pantries.

The four representatives for National Association of Letter Carriers Local 67 who were at the meeting were Manny Fortunato, Jeffrey Polo, Reinaldo Santiago, and Emil Velez.

Mr. Santiago spoke for the group, “First, thank you and I would like to thank our group especially our coordinator . . . Jeffrey Polo [who], along with Manny Fortunato, put in quite a few hours leading up to this event which was very successful. I know the past couple of years it’s been a little bit of touch and go as far as weatherwise but the community has really picked each other up.”

He added, “I would like to thank the Roselle Park Police Department as well which – for the past two years – has assisted us with this event. We want to continue this and we want to keep this growing. What we’re doing does help out people that are in need and it’s only one day but it’s one day that we do across the nation and we want to continue that and we want to thank you again as a community.”

This year’s Stamp Out Hunger campaign took place on May 12th and had residents leaving canned goods and non-perishable food in front of their mailboxes. Letter carriers with assistance from the Roselle Park PBA picked up donations on their route and collected them to delivery to the two local food pantries.